There are only three of us and an adult body needs more than one person to lift. I follow the other two around, waiting on them to lift the mothers off their children so I can retrieve the small bodies. I will never forget this image for as long as I live, however short that time might be now.
One by one, I drop each into a wagon as if they’re a sack of potatoes rather than lifeless little angels. Tears swell in my eyes and sweat beads on my forehead, seeping into my eyes with a burn. After an hour, it seems we’ve hardly made any progress and yet we’ve taken the wagons to and from the crematorium several times already.
Eventually, we carry the last few people to the wagons and leave the chamber empty and prepared for the next victims to meet their demise. I will never be able to close my eyes again and see anything else. How can the German military and police live with themselves knowing what they are doing to all these innocent people? They walk around with smiles on their faces. I don’t understand.
Our last pass to the workroom outside the crematorium brings us to organized piles of sorted bodies other Sonderkommandos must have taken care of while we were retrieving. An SS officer steps inside, holding a rag over his nose, and reaches his hand out with a pair of clippers. Neither of the other two girls take it from his hand, so I do. I assume I’m responsible for removing the hair.
I spare myself from watching the other two with their tasks of removing gold teeth and prosthetic limbs. I cut the hair of each person as close to their scalp as I can, taking handfuls and dropping them into a large set of sacks to my side. I don’t ever want to know what they do with this hair. I hope my imagination is too weak to ever come up with a possible thought of where it goes next.
A thick film of grease or residue shrouds the hair, making it difficult to cut through. But the other two are moving along much faster, which means I need to keep up. My mind is in a haze as we make it through the bodies. It’s been hours and my arms are weak, my head is heavy and my back aches from being hunched over for so long.
We’re escorted out of the crematorium building with our wagons full of hair, teeth, and limbs, then led back to the warehouse buildings by a guard. We don’t leave the same way we entered. There’s a backside passageway into Kanada, away from the line of prisoners waiting to enter the gas chamber. I assume the SS know better than to let the line of people spot us walking by carrying body parts. It would give away their intentions and cause mass chaos.
We stop outside the building where teeth, hair, and limbs are collected within Kanada and lift the sacks two at a time to bring inside. I follow the other two, but before I can step into the building, someone grabs hold of my arm. “Your number?” a man demands from behind me. The man takes the sacks of hair out of my hands and hands them to another prisoner passing by.
“It’s—” I hesitate.
“What it is?” he shouts, flinging me around to face him where I find a second guard holding onto Tatiana’s arm. Her eyes are wide, full of fear, and it’s all my fault. I did this. I asked her to help me, again. I’m still wearing her armband. They must know.
The guard with his grip on me pushes my sleeve up to check my number, since I never answered his question. The other guard holds a clipboard out for him to check. “Foolish women. You don’t know when you’re lucky, do you?” he snaps. “Now you’re about to realize how lucky you were.”
Tatiana is shaking, while I’m frozen in place. Say something. I have to say something. “This isn’t her fault. It’s mine. I forced her to switch places with me.”
“Why? No one would choose to carry dead bodies over working in one of these buildings. You must have had a reason. What was the reason?”
A reason. Anything I say won’t be the right answer.
“My back was aching,” Tatiana says. “I thought a day’s break would make it so I could continue working as normal tomorrow. I didn’t want to hinder the work that needs to be done.”
The guard standing next to her glares at her as if he’s expunging a confession to her lie.
“Is this true?” the guard next to me asks. “You risked both of your lives to help her—a Jew, of all people?”
“Her back hurt. I forced her to switch jobs with me so her back could get better.” The lie continues to grow but fits with my previous lie.
The two guards release us and step to the side to speak indiscreetly, leaving Tatiana and me to stare at each other with hollowed eyes. “I’m sorry,” I mouth the words to her.
She shakes her head, telling me no.
Movement behind her grabs my attention and I glance at the barbed-wire fence between us. Luka is facing the gate, but from the other side where Gas Chamber number four is located. I’ve never had to enter these buildings in Kanada as my work has been done on the other side within a different set of buildings.
Our eyes lock for an instant, and I want to tell him to turn back around and continue singing or doing whatever he’s supposed to be doing. Watching whatever might happen here isn’t going to do him any good.
“Twenty-five whip strokes for each of you,” the one closest to me says, grabbing a wooden barrel from near the door of the warehouse, then flipping it upside down.
The other guard steps aside and pokes his head into the warehouse. “All prisoners report outside at once,” he shouts.
A wave of dizziness washes over me as I inhale ice cold air that somehow burns my lungs.
All the women within the warehouse congregate outside as directed. “This is what happens if you make the foolish decision to switch jobs with another person. Let this be a lesson to you all.”
The guard who checked my number grabs the backside of my smock and tosses me into the barrel, and lifts the smock to expose my entire backside. I’m forced to stare through the barbed-wire fence between Kanada and the gas chamber—from where Luka keeps turning around to see what’s happening.
The first whip whistles through the air before striking me like a set of knives searing into my back with a burning pain that radiates across my body. I gasp for air, but choke as the next lash strikes.
Again.
Through the darkness that falls over me, I see Mama’s face, her eyes full of worry as she reaches out her arms to lift me up as if I’m just a child who’s fallen off my bicycle. And then there’s Tata, his calloused hands cupping my cheeks as he presses a kiss to my forehead, his way of telling me everything will eventually be all right. I’m sorry, I want to tell them. I’m so sorry I didn’t listen to you… I’m scared. I’m so scared. I need you.
